


something so sublime

by tessavirtch



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Friends to Lovers, beautiful best friends for whom i would give my LIFE, i guess? i don’t know what a drabble is and at this point i’m afraid to ask, unless "i love tessa virtue" is a valid plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-19 05:38:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17595482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tessavirtch/pseuds/tessavirtch
Summary: He notes, however briefly, that he’s just realized that he’s very, very romantically in love with his best friend while standing on her front porch on a Saturday morning in January when she smells like citrus fruit and looks like she came straight out of a Hallmark Christmas movie.-a growing collection of oneshots detailing the millions of ways in which tessa virtue and scott moir love each other.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big shoutout to my curiouscat anon who, when i asked for prompts, sent me "i fully came on here to send u a prompt but then i noticed the snowflakes and i got distracted and forgot what it was im sorry" and this image popped into my head INSTANTLY, inspiration sure is a funny thing isn't it 
> 
> also shoutout to tessa for posting that nivea ad today which fits PERFECTLY with this! our minds are powerful sister!!
> 
> sorry for using fun home lyrics for heterosexual purposes (the title of this fic is from "changing my major").
> 
> anyway bon appétit, this is just a short sweet lil thing, hope y'all enjoy!

Snowflakes are falling delicately from the sky, hovering in the air and allowing the wind to carry them along as Scott looks through his windshield. It’s the first snowfall of the new year, and the fresh coating of snow on the landscape makes everything look fresher, more pristine somehow. Inevitably, it will turn into dirty, disgusting-looking sludge within a few days’ time—but right now, it’s very picturesque and serene.

The entire drive home from Michigan today was beautiful; it was longer than usual due to a closure on their typical route, which forced them to take back roads. Tessa was also unusually quiet, only saying a handful of words the entire trip. He didn’t mind any of it, though. It allowed him to observe, to take in the view of the rural landscape coated in white as they passed through each small town along the way. It reminds him of everything that he loves about Canada.

A fruity scent wafts through the air and he looks over to see Tessa in the passenger seat peeling a tangerine, discarding the peel into a plastic bag by her feet. She picks it apart, putting each individual slice into her mouth mechanically as she stares out of the window, presumably daydreaming. The scent is so strong it almost seems artificial; it makes his mouth water.

“I hope you brought enough to share,” he teases. She turns toward him with a small smile, holding out a slice for him to take, and he decides that he wants to be cheeky and instead dips his head down quickly to eat it out of her hand. She yelps and jerks her hand away when his tongue brushes the tip of her forefinger.

“Gross,” she groans, wiping her hand against his sleeve.

He chuckles softly, biting down on the fruit, and a flood of sweet juices coats his mouth. His eyes flutter closed briefly before re-focusing on the road, and he lets out a soft moan.

“I know, right?” she says, crossing her legs and holding the last slice of fruit out to him. “They’re in season right now.” He hums in response and gestures for her to go ahead and eat it, so she pops it into her mouth. She does a little shimmy as she chews and he chuckles.

“Cute,” he muses, and he didn’t really mean to say it out loud. She brings her hand up to her face to cover her small smile and turns to look out her window.

They sit in silence as he turns onto her street. He sees her fidgeting from the corner of his eye as they get closer to her house, and he wonders if maybe she’s having family problems. He doesn’t want to pry. He knows she’ll confide in him if she wants to.

He pulls into the driveway and parks. Tessa lets out a sharp breath before turning to him. “Walk me up?”

“‘Course,” he unbuckles his seatbelt and hops out of the car. He walks over to the passenger side to open her door but she’s already gotten out on her own.

They walk quietly up the driveway and Scott almost wants to ask what’s on her mind. She doesn’t like talking about her feelings, and he doesn’t like to push her to do so, but she didn’t say much for the whole ride home and now her apparent nerves are making him worry.

“I want to try this,” she blurts out just before they reach her front door, stopping abruptly in her tracks and turning to him, and she says it so matter-of-factly that he feels like something is fundamentally wrong with him for not knowing what _this_ could possibly mean.

Their eyes meet, a question lingering in his as hers dart away. She takes a deep breath, straightening her spine and shoving her hands, clenched into fists, into her pockets.

“A relationship, I mean,” she clarifies. “A romantic relationship.”

Her façade of confidence only lasts for a second before she’s avoiding his gaze again. She becomes very fixated on something behind Scott, something that he apparently can’t see. She stays silent then, waiting for his response. He stares at her, heart pounding out of his chest, unable to speak. This isn’t what he expected at all. He has never felt so dumb or so completely at the mercy of another person in his life. But that’s the power she holds over him, he supposes.

After a few seconds she works up the courage to look at him, and the worry in her eyes is enough to bring him back to reality. Before he’s able to get his thoughts together, she’s talking again.

“It’s just something I’ve been thinking about. I don’t know,” she blurts out, a flush creeping up her cheeks. “I just want to try. But if you don’t want to—”

“Tess,” he cuts her off, reaching for her hand and giving it a light squeeze. “Let’s do it.”

She smiles at this, grabbing on to his other hand. “Cool.” she says, nodding.

“Cool,” he repeats. They grin at each other, hands joined between them, for just a beat too long. She nods, breaking their touch and wringing her hands awkwardly.

“So… Uh, take me out tonight? Dinner?”

Snowflakes are sticking to her hair and landing in her eyelashes as he looks her over and she looks like the goddess of winter, he thinks. Is there a goddess of winter? He never paid attention in his mythology class and mostly took it because Tessa took it and she let him copy her homework sometimes. Regardless, if there wasn’t already a goddess of winter, there is one now and her name is Tessa Virtue.

One snowflake finds a home on her bottom lip and lingers there, not melting right away, and he’s never wanted to kiss her more than he does right now. She’s beautiful; her cheeks and lips are extra rosy from the cold, her hair is windswept and messy, and her eyes are shining. He wants to sweep her off of her feet and kiss her all day, every day, and give every part of himself to her until there’s nothing left to give and he is completely and utterly _hers_.

He notes, however briefly, that he’s just realized that he’s very, very romantically in love with his best friend while standing on her front porch on a Saturday morning in January when she smells like citrus fruit and looks like she came straight out of a Hallmark Christmas movie.

He pushes the thoughts aside because all of this, he has to admit, may be a bit intense considering they haven’t even been on their first date yet.

Their first date.

“Scott?”

Right.

“Yes,” he nods, and it dawns on him that _he_ probably should have been the one to ask _her_ to dinner rather than the other way around. Or not. Adhering to archaic gender roles has never really been their thing, anyway, he supposes. “Dinner. Tonight. I’ll pick you up at seven?”

“That sounds great,” she says, and she looks like she might lean forward to kiss him, he wonders if she’s waiting on a cue from him; but then she lightly, playfully punches his arm and turns to go inside. “See you then.”

“T?” he stops her, putting a hand on her shoulder, and he’s going to do it, he’s decided, he’s going to kiss her.

She turns back toward him and her eyes are soft but still find a way to dig deep into his soul and his heart skips a beat. He’s losing his nerve but he’s going to do it. Should he ask her permission first? It wouldn’t be very spontaneous that way, but he wants to be respectful. Would it freak her out if he just went for it? Would it freak her out more than this growing silence is probably freaking her out?

He can’t make himself kiss her. Why can’t he make himself kiss her?

She’s got a smile on her face warm enough to melt all of the snow in the greater London area, and he notices her slowly inching closer as he battles internally with himself, and then her eyes are closed and her lips are on his and suddenly he can’t remember what he was just overthinking and having a minor meltdown about.

She’s got one hand on his chest and one on his neck and he realizes, dumbly, that his arms are still hanging by his sides, and he opts instead to wrap them around her waist, pulling her closer. He doesn’t know why he’s acting like he’s never kissed a girl before. Will she think he’s a bad kisser?

He forces his mind to go blank and allows himself to focus instead on her lips pressed firmly against his and how soft they are and how he can almost taste the tangerine still lingering there. He regrets every second of his life that hasn’t been spent doing exactly this.

She pulls away and lays both of her palms flat on his chest, looking at him with the sweetest smile playing at her lips. He beams back at her and he feels like he’s on fire. He hopes he isn’t obviously blushing so he can maintain some level of dignity.

She backs away from him and his arms fall to his sides. She turns toward the door again, pausing to tilt her head back toward him with a quick, “See ya,” and a coy smile.

She slips into the house and the door clicks quietly behind her. He stares, dazed, at the space she was just occupying and whispers, “See ya,” to her front door. He smiles into the open air for a few moments before practically skipping back to his car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading and i hope you liked it :)
> 
> i might make this a series of ~realizations of love~ but for now let's not count on it and just consider this completed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s a long story—a bowl of rice, but it’s a very long story.”  
> -  
> or, a (maybe ironically) short retelling of a very long story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess this is gonna be a collection of soft, plotless little oneshots now.
> 
> enjoy!

Some days are harder than others. Much, much harder. This has been one of those days.

All day, she felt like she just couldn’t get anything right. Their lifts were nowhere near where they should have been, their twizzles were out of sync, and she was just plain forgetting bits of choreography for their free dance. The world championships are closing in on them and she’s never felt less prepared. They finally made their way to the top two years ago only to be knocked down a peg only a year after that. This year is their chance to prove themselves on the world stage again.

What they don’t tell you about winning is that once you’ve tasted gold, silver will always leave you with a bitter aftertaste that can only be washed away with another victory. And they’re not going to have another victory if she can’t get their programs right even in practice, away from the pressure of judges and an audience. When she thinks about it, she can almost feel the repulsive taste of being second-best lingering at the back of her throat.

_ Scott should have kicked me to the curb for someone better years ago when he had the chance. _

It’s a thought that always crosses her mind on days like this, when she gets to that dark place where she feels like maybe she should just give up skating altogether, maybe she never should have started to begin with.

On a fundamental level, somewhere deep, deep down, she knows that it’s only the chemicals in her brain sabotaging her and making her feel worthless. But the chemicals are doing a damn good job of it.

The sound of someone at her front door jars her from her thoughts.

_ Get it together, Tessa. _

She shakes her head in an effort to push away her thoughts before making her way to the door. One of the many things that Marina always criticizes her for is being too emotional—it’s overdramatic, or childish, or attention-seeking, or any of the other words in the cacophony of negativity that she’s thrown at her—and she’s working on being better about it, she really is, but it’s hard sometimes, because she’s twenty-two and she’s somehow simultaneously been through more hardships than the average young adult, while also being deprived of half of the “normal” life experiences that she should have had by now.

She stops to check her reflection in the mirror by the door before she opens it. No tears. Not even any sign that she was close—no redness in her face, eyes perfectly clear and dry. She’s getting good at this.

She steels herself and unlocks the door before swinging it open, a warm, pleasant smile plastered on her face—but her smile is gone almost as soon as it appeared, replaced with a look of confusion and a little bit of fear.

Nobody is there.

She peeks her head out of the door; there’s nobody to be seen anywhere. Nobody parked outside, nobody walking on the sidewalks, no cars on the street...

She swears she’s seen this in a movie before—one of those horror movies that Scott always used to love to try to subject her to in their early teen years. They always start off completely inconspicuous: pretty girl sits at home alone, then a phone rings or there’s a knock at the door and she goes to investigate, and then suddenly she’s fighting for her life. Tessa caught on quickly, and after the first two times Scott tricked her into watching a movie like this, she learned to identify the signs of impending horror within the first two minutes and would shut movie night down immediately when she saw them.

Against her better judgment, she takes a few small, tentative steps outside to get a better look. She startles when her feet hit something solid, causing a light rattling sound. She looks down and her fear is almost completely replaced by curiosity, but not completely—she is still skeptical that this might be some kind of trick orchestrated by a movie villain.

It’s a bucket. A simple white bucket. She looks closer—it’s filled with rice, with a white envelope protruding from the middle. She narrows her eyes at it.

Slowly, hesitantly, she crouches down and plucks the envelope from the bucket. It’s marked, quite simply, with a  _ T _ . At least, she assumes it’s a  _ T _ . It’s a bit sloppy, the top line at a diagonal slant. It’s the same way Scott writes his  _ T _ s. She gasps with the realization, and all of the horror movie imagery leaves her mind.

She peels the envelope open and she swears she feels her heart stop beating entirely as she unfolds the card and begins to read.

_ “Look how much rice we have, kiddo!” _

She recognizes the reference immediately and it puts a lump in her throat. A rower, Marnie McBean, does these motivational talks about achieving goals, and there’s one metaphor in particular that they like to think about with their training: achieving your goals is like filling a cup with rice. For every action you take toward your end goal, you add a grain of rice to the cup. Or, in this case, to the bucket. She eyes the bucket and guesses that there have to be thousands of grains in it.

She’s felt... an overwhelming number of emotions in the last ninety seconds, and this is the coup de grâce for her façade of stoicism, finally breaking down the wall she’d spent all morning building. She feels tears pooling in the corners of her eyes, but they’re cathartic, happy tears now, unlike the ones threatening to form only a few minutes ago.

_Not here_ , she tells herself, inhaling deeply and trying her hardest to stop the tears from spilling over. _Not where_ _people can see_.

She places the envelope back on top of the pile of rice, then picks up the bucket and puts it down just inside of the entryway. She closes and locks the door behind her, then sinks down onto the floor next to the bucket. With ever-so-slightly shaking hands, she opens the card and continues reading, running her free hand absentmindedly over the grains.

_ “I know it’s been rough lately. But look how far we’ve come! We have so much training behind us. Just think about where we started. We can only add more rice from here. You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever known.” _

She struggles to keep reading, her vision blurring from the tears. She forces her eyes to focus on the rest of the card.

_ “You’re my hero. Really! There’s nothing you can’t do, and I’m so thankful that we’re in this together. Anyway, this is gross. See you later. Love, SDiggity” _

She lets out a sound that’s halfway between a laugh and a sob, because it’s so perfectly  _ Scott _ and so perfectly what she needs right now. She clutches the card to her chest and finally lets her tears flow freely.

-

The next time she sees him, he’s walking across the parking lot at the rink. She hasn’t stopped thinking about the rice since the moment he dropped it off at her door. She’s been envisioning all the ways she would show her appreciation to him ever since.

“Scott!” she calls out.

He turns to her, and she jogs toward him, managing to ignore the sharp jabs of pain she feels when her feet land a certain way, until they’re standing face-to-face.

“Hey, kid—“

She throws her arms around his neck and pulls him into a tight embrace. She catches a glimpse of his face before she’s squeezing him, pressing his face tightly against her shoulder, and he has the audacity to look like he’s confused—like he doesn’t know what he did.

“Thank you,” she murmurs into his shoulder.

“For what?”

She can’t see his face, but she can  _ feel _ him grinning like an idiot and yeah, he knows what he did, and that’s the thing with Scott: he always has these moments of sentimentality, and he’ll hit her in exactly the right place and at the right time emotionally, but then he’ll act as if it was nothing.

Nothing he’s done has ever hit her quite as hard as this. Nothing has ever been as perfectly timed, making her feel exactly the way she needed to feel in exactly the right moment.

It’s the best gift she’s ever received from him, or from anybody, for that matter, she thinks.

“You’re my best friend,” she whispers into his ear. She feels him shake with a silent chuckle before he tightens his arms around her waist.

“And you’re mine,” he responds, and she nuzzles her face into his neck.

“I love you.”

As soon as the words come out of her mouth, she realizes that she can’t remember if she’s ever said it out loud to him before. She tries not to worry about it; she wills her mind to drop the train of thought before it spirals out of control. 

She focuses instead on throwing all of her energy into their embrace. She pulls him even tighter until she’s not sure it’s even possible for them to be any closer, waves of love and appreciation seeping from every inch of her skin. She wants him to feel them—knows that he must be able to.

“I love you too, kiddo,” he says softly as he runs a hand gently through her hair, twisting his head under her grip to press a firm kiss against her temple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy valentine's day ❤

**Author's Note:**

> if anyone has prompts or any random little thoughts or ideas that you would like to see me potentially turn into something readable feel free to [send them my way](https://curiouscat.me/tessavirtch)!
> 
> otherwise i am on [twitter](https://twitter.com/tessavirtch) and [tumblr](https://tessa-virtch.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to be pals!
> 
> comments, kudos, and constructive criticism are highly appreciated ♡


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